Category: Talks

We’ve published the latest discussion between myself and Rupert Sheldrake. They’re available as podcasts or on iTunes. We explore how the ideas and way of life of the Stoics, Platonists and others can help us today bridge supposed divides between…

We’ve published the latest discussion between myself and Rupert Sheldrake. They’re available as podcasts or on iTunes. In his book, Atheists: The Origin of the Species, Nick Spencer tells the story of atheism as one of protest and politics, rather…

It was a more robust discussion than I anticipated, though maybe what feels like discomforting aggression in England is but a bracing exchange in California. But here’s my conversation with the host of the useful Skeptiko podcast, Alex Tsakiris.

We’ve published the latest discussion between myself and Rupert Sheldrake. They’re available as podcasts or on iTunes. We discuss the transformative potential of silence, a practise integral to religious and wisdom traditions. So why is silence so important? What is…

A podcast of our BBC Radio 3 Free Thinking programme, broadcast last Wednesday. Rana Mitter discusses Buddhism in Western therapy and in Eastern politics with psychotherapist Mark Vernon, Rupert Gethin – Professor of Buddhist Studies in the Department of Theology…

We’ve published the latest two discussions between myself and Rupert Sheldrake. They’re available as podcasts or on iTunes. In the first, we discuss our postmortem experience by thinking about what we know of being alive. Might dreams tell us something…

Here is Dirk Lindner’s lovely pic of the School of London, take on 20 November on the steps of St Paul’s. The philosophers: ARISTOTLE: John Lloyd John is the founder of QI and produced the great TV hits Blackadder, Not…

We’ve published the latest two discussions between myself and Rupert Sheldrake. They’re available as podcasts or on iTunes. The first is on an anatheism, the notion that atheism is a phase that many people go through, as is widely recognised…

How did consciousness arise? Is the universe rational? Is there a meaning to life? Once these questions were the domain of the sacred, but in the modern world, science offers very different answers to religion. In this course, Dr Mark…